In the case of offenders fleeing from Canada into the United States, the governors of States are often applied to for their surrender, and questions of a very embarrassing nature arise from these applications.  It has been thought highly important, therefore, to provide for the whole case by a proper treaty stipulation.  The article on the subject in the proposed treaty is carefully confined to such offenses as all mankind agree to regard as heinous and destructive of the security of life and property.  In this careful and specific enumeration of crimes the object has been to exclude all political offenses or criminal charges arising from wars or intestine commotions.  Treason, misprision of treason, libels, desertion from military service, and other offenses of similar character are excluded.

And lest some unforeseen inconvenience or unexpected abuse should arise from the stipulation rendering its continuance in the opinion of one or both of the parties not longer desirable, it is left in the power of either to put an end to it at will.

The destruction of the steamboat Caroline at Schlosser four or five years ago occasioned no small degree of excitement at the time, and became the subject of correspondence between the two Governments.  That correspondence, having been suspended for a considerable period, was renewed in the spring of the last year, but no satisfactory result having been arrived at, it was thought proper, though the occurrence had ceased to be fresh and recent, not to omit attention to it on the present occasion.  It has only been so far discussed in the correspondence now submitted as it was accomplished by a violation of the territory of the United States.  The letter of the British minister, while he attempts to justify that violation upon the ground of a pressing and overruling necessity, admitting, nevertheless, that even if justifiable an apology was due for it, and accompanying this acknowledgment with assurances of the sacred regard of his Government for the inviolability of national territory, has seemed to me sufficient to warrant forbearance from any further remonstrance against what took place as an aggression on the soil and territory of the country.  On the subject of the interference of the British authorities in the West Indies, a confident hope is entertained that the correspondence which has taken place, showing the grounds taken by this Government and the engagements entered into by the British minister, will be found such as to satisfy the just expectation of the people of the United States.